Five takeaways from France’s election

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The first round of France’s parliamentary election, hurriedly called last month by President Emmanuel Macron, has revealed a nation in political flux.

Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National soared to new heights, securing 11.5mn votes, with its support rising across the country and across almost all demographic groups.

But her path to an outright majority — securing 289 seats out of 577 to seize control of the premiership and government — remains uncertain in the July 7 second round. A hung parliament still remains a possibility and the president can trigger another election only a year from now, increasing the political uncertainty surrounding France.

Here are five takeaways from Sunday’s vote:

The number of three-way run-offs will be decisive

Voter participation was the highest in decades, leading to an unprecedented number of three-way run-offs (and even a few four-way ones) next Sunday. The higher the turnout, the lower the threshold for candidates to make the second round.

More than half the seats — around 310 races — could be decided in “triangles” in the second round. Each one represents a tactical dilemma for the leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) bloc and Macron’s Ensemble alliance: should the third-place candidate withdraw to maximise the anti-RN vote?

There are 68 contests against the RN where Macron’s Ensemble is in second place and another 62 where the NFP recorded the second-highest vote share. The RN’s lead would be in jeopardy in most of these races — but only if their rivals unite against it.

The parties have until Tuesday evening to re-register for the second round, putting a ticking clock on the negotiations. Their decisions will help determine whether the RN can capture an outright majority of seats, or if France ends up with a fragmented hung parliament.

Young voters leaned left, while Macron narrowly won the over-70s

Age was a key factor. Many young voters backed the NFP, the RN performed well across all age groups and the oldest voters threw their support behind Macron’s Ensemble.

Indeed the only age group that gave the most votes to Macron’s Ensemble were the over-70s, with almost a third backing the incumbent party, according to Ipsos. This starkly contrasts with 2017, when young voters helped Macron first win the presidency and then an overwhelming majority in parliament. That year, 33 per cent of 25 to 34 year olds backed him, according to Ipsos, compared with only 13 per cent on Sunday.

The NFP performed well among the youngest voters, earning almost half of votes from 18 to 24 year olds. Meanwhile, the only group that failed to give more than 30 per cent of its vote to the RN were the over-70s. Older voters recall the far right under Jean-Marie Le Pen and have not been convinced by his daughter’s decade-long effort to “detoxify” the party.

The changing demographics of the far-right vote

Under Marine Le Pen the RN has overturned decades of conventional wisdom about its electoral weaknesses.

The party was long seen as performing poorly among the wealthy, those with university or higher degrees and people over the age of 60. It also suffered from a gender gap, attracting fewer female voters.

The first-round results shows those maxims to no longer be true. The RN’s base is now one of the broadest of all France’s main parties.

Driving much of the change is Le Pen’s 28-year old protégé Jordan Bardella, who appeals to women and does not have the baggage of the Le Pen name.

The RN has also pledged more prudent fiscal policies, and said that it would keep Macron’s planned tax cuts for companies — a bid to reassure wealthier voters and the business community.

Macron’s centrists feel the squeeze

Macron’s centrist alliance won the most votes in the first round of the 2022 legislative elections; but it fell to third place on Sunday.

Support for Macron had already dropped precipitously from 2017, when France’s young president rode a wave of enthusiasm over his reform agenda to secure an absolute parliamentary majority.

Macron’s centrists won 43.06 per cent of the 2017 vote. They dropped to 25.8 per cent in the 2022 parliamentary elections, depriving the president of an outright majority and hobbling his second term.

In Sunday’s first round, Ensemble was relegated to third place, with 22.4 per cent of the vote, behind the RN and NFP.

Macron badly miscalculated that an early election would mean the perennially fractious left would not be able to come together in time.

Despite their vast political differences, politicians from both the far right and the left reached the same conclusion after Sunday’s vote: “Macronism is dead.”

Strongholds of the left and far right delivered

Across 76 districts, candidates won outright, meaning they avoided a run-off by securing an absolute majority with at least 25 per cent of registered voters.

The landslide wins were almost evenly divided between the far-right RN with 39 constituencies, and the leftwing NFP with 31. Macron’s Ensemble only had two, and the much-depleted conservative Les Républicains had one.

RN has its strongest bastions in the industrial north where Le Pen and her allies have been implanted for more than a decade, as well as along the southern coast. Le Pen herself was re-elected with over 50 per cent of the vote in Hénin-Beaumont on Sunday.

But the RN has also consolidated its strength in rural areas and small towns where voters feel public services have receded, such as Gironde near Bordeaux, and Haute-Saône in Burgundy.

The leftwing NFP has its own bastions in the eastern arrondissements of Paris and the poor, immigrant banlieues around Paris such as Seine St-Denis. They also won big in places with similar demographics: low-income areas outside smaller cities like Rennes and Nantes, and north of Marseille.

Some of this is down to the fact that French citizens of immigrant descent, especially in the Muslim community, have begun voting en masse for far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) in recent years because they see them as their only advocates. Mathilde Panot, one of the LFI leaders, was easily re-elected in Val-de-Marne, south of Paris.